The shareholders who hold a large portion of Tesla, want Elon Musk to spend money on advertising of the Tesla brand. A major point in the Bloomberg report was the shareholders’ argument against the nontraditional approach of Elon Musk. They said that advertising can increase brand value, product awareness, and interest, along with this, it can help to mitigate and dilute substantial fear, uncertainty, doubt and disinformation campaigns sponsored by competitors and detractors worldwide. Mr. Musk deliberately avoids traditional advertising in favor of his twitter account of 35 million followers and focuses on more non-traditional methods. He believes that focusing solely on advertising in today’s world is a ticket to mediocrity and a sure-fire formula for failure.
Tesla shareholders want Musk to stop tweeting because of his ambiguous and “off the rails” comments that unnecessarily fluctuate the tesla stock. This Tesla today is the most valuable automobile company. Elon Musk does not dislike advertising, only the traditional methods. Generally, Tesla advertises in 24/7, techno-digital, mobile,app-laden world which is more popular. It is not just TV ads or print ads. Another perception is advertising is not a cause of audience actions but rather it works with and through various customer predisposition and personal influences and we can say brand awareness is not a useful predictor of action. Awareness is always good but it may not be useful every time.
The function of advertising is more useful for the customer who knows or uses the product, in other words, once a brand has been owned or used, advertising can work as improving the owner’s attitude. The director of social research for CBS, Joseph T. Klapper wrote an article about advertising, sixty years ago, in it, he indicated that media mainly reinforces perceptions, opinions, and attitudes that already exist.
Elon Musk is extremely adept at using PR and digital social media to help form opinions and attitudes and also uses public relations to cross-selling advantage. He has made many appearances in podcasts, YouTube videos, and talk shows, and they have all been well received. Many corporate giants such as Starbucks, chipotle, etc. do not promote their products through advertising.
In my opinion, advertising plays an outsized role in building brands. It raises brand salience and allows more brands to be included in more of each customer’s consideration sets but, the traditional approach may not always be the answer.
